Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

In my defense, I can not find anything in post #81 (the official rules) that clearly says that you can not interpret the rules like I did.

Take for instance this situation in Act II: Bone Prison for a Necromancer. It´s not a prereq. for anything. Couldn´t we have placed a point there with the thought that it might be chosen as a Power by any of the next 3 players?

I'm sure the failing was mine. But no, the example you give would've been illegal, according to my intention (though it also would've been forgiven, since the original rule was perhaps vague).

 

[purplelocust]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I'm glad Antilles was able to fight his way out of the spam folder...

Thanks for the quick rules clarification, it's good to have examples to make sure it's clear!

 

[JoeBruce1]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

So I fire up Diablo this evening to start out on Act Three, and had a very nice little (practical) drop from the group of flesh demons or whatever it is that the Wanderer spawns. Nothing game-changing, but still cool. I'd post a readout but I'm pretty sure we agreed that item-discussion is taboo.

I guess this prompted my idea to suggest people keep some notes on their character experiences. I believe this was suggested in past Ultimate Tournaments, if not properly implemented. Since we have intention to open character discussion after normal (and if not, then perhaps all the more reason to archive our adventures), why not keep tabs on your personal contributions to equipment choices and skill developments?

 

[purplelocust]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I've been doing a quick GoMule snapshot of the character's stats and skills for each character when they arrive and when I send them off, for possible future commentary. It's easy to do with dump and then just copy the start part.

 

[pwangsta]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I have also been keeping a library of screenies (mostly just item drops, but also when I make interesting equipment choices) that I plan to use to write up the characters I've played whenever the time comes to do so. Hopefully, the pics will be enough to sufficiently jog my memory if necessary.

 

[jiansonz]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I´ve been thinking about summing up the thoughts I´ve had when I have received a new character. Both times, I´ve done a lot of 'fiddling' before I´ve started to fight monsters. I should probably write that down before I forget more details...

 

[Hoop76]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Antilles is waiting in Act 4 now. Really solid build so far.

 

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

@ Hoop: you have PM.

 

[Hoop76]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I answered you pm

 

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

You sure did :teeth:

Hoop has discovered a loophole in the equipment rules which I did not intend, but there it is, and in the interests of making sure everyone has the same opportunities, I will share it here.

The loophole regards Charsi imbues, but it could technically also apply to items provided by Anya (either through personalization or quest reward) or socketed by Larzuk.

Here's the basic process:

1. Charsi imbues an item. YOU DON'T USE IT. Therefore, it is not an item that must be passed forward with the character... after all, even though it was their imbue, they were not wearing it.

2. You decide the imbued item is something you'd like to save for the future, either for personalization or socketing. OK, fair enough. You stick it in your ATMA stash, and send the character forward.

3. You get your next character. You notice that the imbued item in your stash is better than the item the new character has in that same slot... and it is legal for you to equip the imbue now, even though you were saving it for later to personalize or socket... after all, it was imbued, and it is legal to equip imbued items under the rules.

Of course, once the item is equipped, if it is used for a significant portion of the act, it needs to go forward to the next player... so you could no longer save it for personalizing at that point.

Sigh. Just when you think you've anticipated everything...

 

[Wolron]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

You sure did :teeth:


2. You decide the imbued item is something you'd like to save for the future, either for personalization or socketing. OK, fair enough. You stick it in your ATMA stash, and send the character forward.

...

NO! Not fair enough! Unless I do not have the most recent version of your rules, under "A Note on the spirit of the tournament" it reads:

1. You will pass your character to the next player with the gear you used to beat the act, AND with the gear you honestly think is the best/most useful you have in your possession.

The "AND" is essential. It is not "OR". A Charci embue is almost always better than the white or gray gear that you find. I say "almost" because some novice might embue an armor and then later use the stealth rune word on a two socketed armor (it takes all kinds).

OK, that is my opinion based on the rules writeup, but I also wonder what motive someone would have to keep an item from one character (that they must pass on to someone else) just to give it to another character (that they must pass on to someone else). The only motive that I can imagine is to pass on a real dog of a character in the hope of eliminating the competition. This also is directly opposed to the spirit of the tournament.

I received a character with no Charci embue. It was at the beginning of act 3; the character was only at level 21. Its most impressive piece of gear was a cap with a couple of rudy chips in it. It was a dog. But, I had a great time turning the dog into a wolf. Though I had more fun with this character than any other I am likely to receive in this tournament, that does not change the fact that the creation of this character is obviously in opposition to the "spirit of the tournament".

 

[Hoop76]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I didn't intentionally try to use a loophole, i just imbued it and never equipped it, when i got my next char i put it on her thinking it was ok because i had never used the item yet. Don't worry the item wasn't anything to write home about. Sorry for any confusion, as you can tell by the posts, i was in a hurry to get act 1 done, because i was over the time limit. That is the main reason why the mistake was made.

 

[jiansonz]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

It was a dog. But, I had a great time turning the dog into a wolf.

Great choice of words! :thumbsup:

 

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

@ Wolron: chill out, dad :wink:

Your reading of the rules is correct, except for two important considerations:

1. It is perfectly legal for players to save items for the personalizing and socketing rewards. And I think the expectation is that players will not want to save their junk.

2. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Which item is more useful than another is always open to interpretation, and depends on play style. I can think of a ton of things you could do with a helmet or armor in act 1 normal, all of which would be more useful than an imbue. Etc.

One additional clarification I will make, however, which I have not made before... and which I want to make before things start to get interesting:

You may not remove an EQUIPPED item that you receive on a new character in order to save it for your own socket and/or personalization rewards. The only time you should replace gear on a character you have received is if you are improving it.

This loophole occurred to me last night, while thinking about Hoop's surprise. Hopefully that'll be the last one.

 

[purplelocust]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Indeed, but it's hard to imagine that a white item would be better than any imbue! Not that we haven't all had hundreds of useless imbues, but that would need to be worse than useless. I can imagine a worse-than-useless imbue on a weapon (knockback, HCMTF, ?) for some builds, but not really for any of the item spots people would imbue in this tourney.

I'm thinking about this tourney a little backwards: as a tourney among a bunch of characters, and they have to pass through the hands of a bunch of players and survive each one! Some of us are players with HC experience with a wide range of builds and some of us may not even like various classes and builds or even tried them much, so I'm trying to make each character have as good of a chance of making it through as many players as possible without dying... To that end, I'm happy to send on characters with lots of alternate gear in their stash, or things that may be useful later- the alternative is selling it for gold, and there isn't much point of that.

It's great that there have been no deaths so far, good luck to all!

 

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Indeed, but it's hard to imagine that a white item would be better than any imbue!

Indeed, but not everyone might be as savvy about what to imbue in the first place. The smart thing to do in act 1 normal would've been to imbue gloves, boots, or a belt... armor, weapons, shields and helms could all be used with runewords, or other socketed items. But that doesn't mean everyone thought of that. It's also possible that someone might have gambled on imbuing a class-specific item or scepter/staff/wand in the hope of getting decent skill mods... that imbue could then turn out worse than a plain white or socketed item, depending on what skills or mods spawned.

 

[skunkbelly]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I didn't intentionally try to use a loophole, i just imbued it and never equipped it, when i got my next char i put it on her thinking it was ok because i had never used the item yet. Don't worry the item wasn't anything to write home about. Sorry for any confusion, as you can tell by the posts, i was in a hurry to get act 1 done, because i was over the time limit. That is the main reason why the mistake was made.

Again, you didn't actually make "a mistake." What you did was perfectly legal. It just wasn't anticipated by your intrepid tournament host.

 

[jiansonz]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

The smart thing to do in act 1 normal would've been to imbue gloves, boots, or a belt... armor, weapons, shields and helms could all be used with runewords, or other socketed items.

I did imbue one of these things. But if my character had made it to level 21 (which they do about 10% of the time) I would have imbued a Javelin.

 

[Wolron]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

@ Wolron: chill out, dad :wink:

I'm chilled. As I said, the character was great fun. However, I thought that the intention of saving items for later was to save items that were unusable so that they could be usable later. With that in mind, you can follow all the rules and the spirit instead of just some of the rules and very little of the spirit.

No matter how you play it, nothing is really too useful in Act 1 or 2 anyway (act 3 seems to qualify there too). Not useful currently nor worthy of saving for later.

 

[JoeBruce1]

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

No matter how you play it, nothing is really too useful in Act 1 or 2 anyway (act 3 seems to qualify there too). Not useful currently nor worthy of saving for later.

Au contraire - I found two items worthy of socket/personalizaition in Act One. They are not so great as to guarantee it, but I have yet to find anything to replace them in my stash.

It will be very interesting when this tournament progresses into Nightmare; I certainly hope we have some oddball character builds (Hell-worthy, but non-cookie-cutter).